Fear of Failing

I am not making a mockery of any parties that are involved in this post. just highlighting an issue

 This post is dedicated to a small piece of news that has become so hot among the netizens of Malaysia. What can i say about the mass disgust of the people discussing about a particular person. well if you are born in Malaysia, there will be a time in the past where there is a big hoo ha on a particular student that did exceptionally well in a national level exam. not only did the person did our nation proud but manage to impress the governing bodies. There were lots of support and sponsorship offerings that were given to this person to support tertiary education.

Once this happen, it became an aspiration among most parents to have their children to accomplish what this person did. well i am one of the children who had to pressure of getting the best among the best. For most westerners who automatically think that this is an asian thing, well i wont say you are wrong  but hell yeah it is. from my 15 years of going through this education system, never once that i felt so pressured to get good grades and dreaded the time when my marks come back in red ink.


for once i can say i had the fear of failing. well after going through the system, that this is a bad thing. i am sure most of my peers would be dying to bash up this post, but  i have seen from my perspective that fear of failing is bad. one reason is that this cultivates a different type of learning experience. instead of learning to understand basic fundamentals, a memory based learning is born from this. i can say the way i studied is not by understanding but by memorising for the exams. Well , to tell you honestly i am never good at memorising  and thus after sitting for any exams, i totally forget what the heck i have studied in class. but some subjects that i have way too much interest in it, i could actually explain to people after 7 years not looking at the subject.

from this i can say the reason of that is because i understand the subject not memorising some form of formulas or stuff. well if you are curious what subject it is, it is Physics and Additional Mathematics(oh noes , asians and their maths.) well me is duhhh half chinaman and duh half indianman.

oh well getting back to topic, the fear of failing makes students learn things by memorising. some say that it does not and i have to agree, some exceptional students are bloody sponges . what ever goes in the brain stays in the brain. but unfortunately i am not spongebob. And from my experience studying abroad in England, there is a different system where learning becomes interesting as we learn based on failures and mistakes. but at the same time i wont say this is the best method of learning too. there might be lots of non genuine students who dont really want to study would drop out of this system. but as of the percentage who really want to learn would benefit from this.It gives opportunity for those who don't understand stuff to make mistakes and learn from mistakes that happen. my perspective of learning is that when one is allowed to make mistakes that knowledge becomes an experience which is more valuable than facts that are just kept in one corner of the brain.

so going back to the first story about this extraordanary student, that student managed to get a scholarship to pursue a tertiary education in England. well some how the person manage to fail one of her subject. this statement was released by some local blogger in my country and it became a public uproar over how someone so perfect could fail a paper. the thing is I am not condemming the person for failing but this brings out the the very fact of the title of the blog. THE FEAR OF FAILING.

the thing is that the issue became so intense when the parents had to come out and make a statement to all malaysians. well you guessed it, statement was the child did not fail. it was announced that the student did not failed and here i am thinking why the hell or how the hell we come to this stage of getting so scared to fail doesnt it hampers learning experience. even if the person did not fail which i doubt so because i have failed many times before in tertiary level.

When i have kids in the future, i would not want to put the pressure when my child fails but work together with them to understand why they make the mistake.

But then again i dont have children so i wont understand how hard it is to raise a child. lol


anyway for those who took time off your busy schedule to read this from the top to bottom: YOU'RE AWESOME!!!

for those who TL:DR : YOU'RE AWESOME TOO!!!!!!!